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In this generous collection of 15 chapters, compiled from conference papers and book chapters or introductions produced between 1995 and 2010, Sodré explores the opportunities and hazards of “imaginary existences” as she moves fluently between literary texts, clinical accounts and psychoanalytic theory. A series of interconnected questions has preoccupied Sodré over these years so, although the book is a compilation, there is a central character, the compulsive daydreamer. And a central theme: the use and abuse of imagination (with the use and abuse of reading as a related subplot).
The centrality of imagination is evidenced by the titles of both this and Sodré’s previous book, Imaginary Characters (1995). The epigram to this volume, Don Quixote’s – “I imagine all I say to be true” – directs us to the central problematic: wishful daydreaming as refuge from the facts of life, whether it is indulged in by patients, characters or indeed authors.
In Chapter 1, Sodré is sharp-eyed, noticing the moments when George Eliot in The Mill on the Floss, despite her conscious awareness of the danger of “substituting vague forms, bred by imagination in the mists of feelings, in place of substantial reality” (2), evades more painful truthfulness about sibling rivalry and guilt by succumbing to a wish-fulfilling phantasy of easy reparation, leading Sodré to speculate on Eliot’s own unresolved guilt over the loss of her older sister. This first chapter is a very successful illustration of Sodré’s method as she tracks the development of a more mature perspective by cross-referencing The Mill on the Floss against Eliot’s subsequent texts. Implicit here is an understanding of writing as self-analysis, although Sodré does not draw attention to this.
Sodré suggests that Eliot’s move from realism to the supernaturalism of The Lifted Veil offers her “relief” from the “all too concrete reality” of her sister’s death. This exemplifies the sophistication of Sodré’s understanding of the interplay